The invention disclosed herein relates generally to automated mail sorting and more particularly, method and apparatus for processing return to sender mail and reducing the amount of subsequent return to sender mail created by the sender.
The processing and handling of mailpieces consumes an enormous amount of human and financial resources, particularly if the processing of the mailpieces is done manually. The processing and handling of mailpieces not only takes place at the Postal Service, but also occurs at each and every business or other site where communication via the mail delivery system is utilized. That is, various pieces of mail generated by a plurality of departments and individuals within a company need to be addressed, collected, sorted and franked as part of the outgoing mail process. Additionally, incoming mail needs to be collected and sorted efficiently to ensure that it gets to the addressee (i.e. employee or department) in a minimal amount of time. Since much of the documentation and information being conveyed through the mail system is critical in nature relative to the success of a business, it is imperative that the processing and handling of both the incoming and outgoing mailpieces be done efficiently and reliably so as not to negatively impact the functioning of the business.
Various automated mail-handling machines have been developed for processing incoming mail (removing individual pieces of mail from a stack and performing subsequent actions on each individual piece of mail). Generally, the mail handling machines separate individual mailpieces from a stack, read the mailpieces using an optical character recognition (OCR) system and compare the read information to an addressee database in order to determine the appropriate destination points for delivery of the mailpieces. Some of the incoming mail received at a mailroom of the company can be unreadable by the OCR system, the quantity of which can be great since recipients cannot control the addressee format in which the incoming mail is received. Some of the unreadable mail could be, for example, mail which is not OCR readable called OCR rejects (i.e. smeared or needs to be opened to determine addressee), mystery mail which are mail with no particular addressee (i.e. mail addressed to a company or department only or mail with poor quality handwriting), or research mail (i.e. mail that cannot be read by OCR but does not require opening for the operator to determine the addressee, including the situation where there are several potential addressees with the same name). The unreadable mail, which will be referred to generally as reject mail is expensive to process since it drains the resources of the mail room requiring additional time and labor for sorting and delivery.
Another type of mail, which can be categorized as unreadable, generally by incoming mail sorting apparatus is return to sender (RTS) since the addressee, in most cases, is not in the addressee database of the mail sorting apparatus. Typical return to sender mail is marked with return to sender text and/or a graphics symbol. The graphics symbols applied to return to sender mail are not uniform or standard and are not applied to a standard location on return to sender mailpieces. An OCR system configured to recognize text could be configured with additional capabilities and additional read regions to recognize return to sender icon or markings. Other methods could also be used to determine return to sender mail such as reading the addressee ZIP Code, if it is readable to determine if the addressee is in the addressee database.
An easier and possibly less costly method of handling the challenges of return to sender mail is to reduce it at its sourcexe2x80x94the company where the mailing is produced. The reduction of return to sender mail by obtaining more accurate address information at it""s source is important for many reasons including reducing overhead costs in sorting and delivering mailpieces, but also in managing customer relationships. Each year, corporations spend billions of dollars on customer relationship management (CRM). One of the biggest challenges businesses face is preventing inaccurate data from compromising their databases. As Web based interactions become more prevalent, customers become more remote and interactions with customers become impersonal. Customer relationship management becomes more important. As businesses capitalize on making sales to existing customers, it becomes increasingly important to have up to date customer information including address information in the business database, which is an important asset. Accurate data is the cornerstone of any customer relationship management strategy. A corporation cannot build a relationship or properly serve or sell to customers if it does not know where they are. Companies routinely face the challenge of keeping data accurate in a world that is constantly changing.
Any CRM strategy that fails to recognize the dynamic nature of consumers"" lives and lifestyles is likely to fall short of expectations. The dynamic lives and lifestyles of American""s are evident in the fact that the average American moves about once every five years. In fact, 17 percent of Americans move every year. Of the people who move annually, 40 percent of them do not notify the USPS of their new address. Furthermore, even when they do not move, consumers are not stagnant; they get married, buy homes, get promotions, switch jobs, etc. They essentially become lost customers to many companies. For high-volume mailers, the consequences include missed cash flow and costly mail rework.
To compete in our data centric world, businesses need to ensure data integrity and accuracy. But how do you get accurate customer data? Companies need to append missing information or correct inaccurate information to complete the portrait of their customer and feed that data to the various operational units that need itxe2x80x94including call centers, marketing groups and the sales force. A business with this capability has an edge because of its enhanced ability to communicate with its customers andxe2x80x94by keeping the solution in-housexe2x80x94by maintaining customer confidentiality. Clean data allows for more true one-to-one marketing, improved response rates, reduced costs due to inaccuracies, and perhaps most important of all, security from fraud.
And more to the point, how do companies utilize customer data effectively, particularly when the data is located in disparate repositories spread across a global business enterprise? Businesses need to recognize and interconnect the components of document management. Five components of document management are create, produce, distribute, receive and update. And an infrastructure is needed to connect these components to reducing end-to-end costs, increase user convenience and ensure delivery reliability and security.
Thus, one of the problems of the prior art is that a system is not available for to provide a closed loop solution for processing return to sender mail and improving data inaccuracies and connect the components of customer relationship management. Therefore, a system and method for processing return to sender mailpieces is needed which integrates return to sender processing with the incoming mailpiece sorting apparatus and with outgoing mailpiece processing using the document inserting system that generate the mailpieces.
This invention overcomes the disadvantages of the prior art by providing a method of processing return to sender mailpieces and providing updated data to inserting systems producing such mailpieces. This in turn helps to solve data quality problems at their source and reduce processing costs by reducing the number of subsequent return to sender mailpieces. The present invention is directed to, in general, automated mail sorting and automated mailpiece creation and more particularly, a method of reducing return to sender mail using an automated mailpiece sorting apparatus and an inserting system, video coding station and return mail workstation to provide closed loop processing.
An embodiment of the system 200 of the present invention comprises a mailpiece sorting apparatus 8, video coding station 60, inserter system 40, return mail workstation 66 and a web server 80 for interconnecting several components of the system 200. The system 200 provides a closed loop solution for reducing return to sender mailpieces generated by a company that is sorting incoming mailpieces using the automated mailpiece sorting apparatus 8.
In an embodiment of the method of the present invention, mailpieces are sorted by the mailpiece sorting apparatus. Mailpieces that can be read properly by the mailpiece sorting apparatus OCR system are sent to their designated sort bins. Mailpieces that the mailpiece sorting apparatus OCR system determines to be return to sender mailpieces are sent to a return to sender bin. The return to sender mailpieces are processed using a video coding station 60 and a return mail workstation 66. The video coding station 60 is used for input of addressee information read by an operator from an image of the mailpiece. The return mail workstation is used to cleanse the addressee information input at the video coding station 60. Cleansed address information and other messages are sent from the return mail workstation to an electronic data file for an inserter system, which generates outgoing mailpieces. The cleansed and other address information is used to either out sort mailpieces from the outgoing mail stream or correct address information for outgoing mailpieces.
An advantage of the method of the present invention is that it provides a document management solution by providing a system and method to create, produce distribute, receive and update the mailpiece creation and delivery process. Another advantage of the present invention is that it reduces end-to-end costs, increases user convenience and improves delivery reliability and security. Other advantages of the invention will in part be obvious and will in part be apparent from the specification. The aforementioned advantages are illustrative of the advantages of the various embodiments of the present invention.